"Well, she's not sleeping on my floor!" Robbie laughed in spite of how miserable the discussion was. The nightmare of trying to share a room with her was legitimately a horror-shock sort of joke no matter whose room it theoretically was. Worse if it was him, because Robbie wasn't sure she'd stay on the floor or out of his head.

He wasn't being too rough on his arms - the scratches fade in seconds. It kept him grounded in the present, rather than tumbling down the rabbit hole of how he felt then.

"I wouldn't have wanted to see you anyway. Not after my mom." That had been a disaster. Months and months later, talking to Rich had ended in rejection as well. That was part of the beauty of the Penance suit. The full metal mask and isolation of the Thunderbolts team insulated him from the disgust of loved ones. "I had enough getting kicked in the face. I'm not... I'm not trying to downplay how much it sucks. I just. I can't think about loss a lot."

Because he spent his mission like a glued-together Humpty Dumpty getting kicked in the cracks, and it turned out he was pretty fragile. His eyes itched with wetness, but Robbie refused to surrender and wipe them. He tipped his head back a little and stared down the void over Vance's head. His voice sounded less strained without the pressure of directly looking and wondering about every change in expression. "It's rough. They - the fears - I think I'm stuck with them forever."